*Uncritical Exuberance?
*Judith Butler
Very few of us are immune to the exhilaration of this time. My friends on
the left write to me that they feel something akin to "redemption" or that
"the country has been returned to us" or that "we finally have one of us in
the White House." Of course, like them, I discover myself feeling
overwhelmed with disbelief and excitement throughout the day, since the
thought of having the regime of George W. Bush over and gone is an enormous
relief. And the thought of Obama, a thoughtful and progressive black
candidate, shifts the historical ground, and we feel that cataclysm as it
produces a new terrain. But let us try to think carefully about the shifted
terrain, although we cannot fully know its contours at this time. The
election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to
be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption, and if we subscribe
to the heightened modes of identification that he proposes ("we are all
united") or that we propose ("he is one of us"), we risk believing that this
political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of
political life, especially political life in these times. There have always
been good reasons not to embrace "national unity" as an ideal, and to nurse
suspicions toward absolute and seamless identification with any political
leader. After all, fascism relied in part on that seamless identification
with the leader, and Republicans engage this same effort to organize
political affect when, for instance, Elizabeth Dole looks out on her
audience and says, "I love each and every one of you."
It becomes all the more important to think about the politics of exuberant
identification with the election of Obama when we consider that support for
Obama has coincided with support for conservative causes. In a way, this
accounts for his "cross-over" success. In California, he won by 60% of the
vote, and yet some significant portion of those who voted for him also voted
against the legalization of gay marriage (52%). How do we understand this
apparent disjunction? First, let us remember that Obama has not explicitly
supported gay marriage rights. Further, as Wendy Brown has argued, the
Republicans have found that the electorate is not as galvanized by "moral"
issues as they were in recent elections; the reasons given for why people
voted for Obama seem to be predominantly economic, and their reasoning seems
more fully structured by neo-liberal rationality than by religious
concerns. This is clearly one reason why Palin's assigned public function
to galvanize the majority of the electorate on moral issues finally
failed. But if "moral" issues such as gun control, abortion rights and gay
rights were not as determinative as they once were, perhaps that is because
they are thriving in a separate compartment of the political mind. In other
words, we are faced with new configurations of political belief that make it
possible to hold apparently discrepant views at the same time: someone can,
for instance, disagree with Obama on certain issues, but still have voted
for him. This became most salient in the emergence of the counter
Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up to their own
racism, but said they would vote for Obama anyway. Anecdotes from the field
include claims like the following: "I know that Obama is a Muslim and a
Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably better for the
economy." Such voters got to keep their racism and vote for Obama,
sheltering their split beliefs without having to resolve them.
Along with strong economic motivations, less empirically discernible factors
have come into play in these election results. We cannot underestimate the
force of *dis-identification* in this election, a sense of revulsion that
George W. has "represented" the United States to the rest of the world, a
sense of shame about our practices of torture and illegal detention, a sense
of disgust that we have waged war on false grounds and propagated racist
views of Islam, a sense of alarm and horror that the extremes of economic
deregulation have led to a global economic crisis. Is it despite his race,
or because of his race, that Obama finally emerged as a preferred
representative of the nation? Fulfilling that representative-function, he
is at once black and not-black (some say "not black enough" and others say
"too black"), and, as a result, he can appeal to voters who not only have no
way of resolving their ambivalence on this issue, but do not want one. The
public figure who allows the populace to sustain and mask its ambivalence
nevertheless appears as a figure of "unity": this is surely an ideological
function. Such moments are intensely imaginary, but not for that reason
without their political force.
As the election approached, there has been an increased focus on *the
person* of Obama: his gravity, his deliberateness, his ability not to lose
his temper, his way of modeling a certain evenness in the face of hurtful
attacks and vile political rhetoric, his promise to reinstate a version of
the nation that will overcome its current shame. Of course, the promise is
alluring, but what if the embrace of Obama leads to the belief that we might
overcome all dissonance, that unity is actually possible? What is the
chance that we may end up suffering a certain inevitable disappointment when
this charismatic leader displays his fallibility, his willingness to
compromise, even to sell out minorities? He has, in fact, already done this
in certain ways, but many of us "set aside" our concerns in order to enjoy
the extreme un-ambivalence of this moment, risking an uncritical exuberance
even when we know better. Obama is, after all, hardly a leftist, regardless
of the attributions of "socialism" proffered by his conservative opponents.
In what ways will his actions be constrained by party politics, economic
interests, and state power; in what ways have they been compromised
already? If we seek through this presidency to overcome a sense of
dissonance, then we will have jettisoned critical politics in favor of an
exuberance whose phantasmatic dimensions will prove consequential. Maybe we
cannot avoid this phantasmatic moment, but let us be mindful about how
temporary it is. If there are avowed racists who have said, "I know that he
is a Muslim and a terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway," there are
surely also people on the left who say, "I know that he has sold out gay
rights and Palestine, but he is still our redemption." I know very well,
but still: this is the classic formulation of disavowal. Through what means
do we sustain and mask conflicting beliefs of this sort? And at what
political cost?
There is no doubt that Obama's success will have significant effects on the
economic course of the nation, and it seems reasonable to assume that we
will see a new rationale for economic regulation and for an approach to
economics that resembles social democratic forms in Europe; in foreign
affairs, we will doubtless see a renewal of multi-lateral relations, the
reversal of a fatal trend of destroying multilateral accords that the Bush
administration has undertaken. And there will doubtless also be a more
generally liberal trend on social issues, though it is important to remember
that Obama has not supported universal health care, and has failed to
explicitly support gay marriage rights. And there is not yet much reason to
hope that he will formulate a just policy for the United States in the
Middle East, even though it is a relief, to be sure, that he knows Rashid
Khalidi.
The indisputable significance of his election has everything to do with
overcoming the limits implicitly imposed on African-American achievement; it
has and will inspire and overwhelm young African-Americans; it will, at the
same time, precipitate a change in the self-definition of the United States.
If the election of Obama signals a willingness on the part of the majority
of voters to be "represented" by this man, then it follows that who "we" are
is constituted anew: we are a nation of many races, of mixed races; and he
offers us the occasion to recognize who we have become and what we have yet
to be, and in this way a certain split between the representative function
of the presidency and the populace represented appears to be overcome. That
is an exhilarating moment, to be sure. But can it last, and should it?
To what consequences will this nearly messianic expectation invested in
this man lead? In order for this presidency to be successful, it will have
to lead to some disappointment, and to survive disappointment: the man will
become human, will prove less powerful than we might wish, and politics will
cease to be a celebration without ambivalence and caution; indeed, politics
will prove to be less of a messianic experience than a venue for robust
debate, public criticism, and necessary antagonism. The election of Obama
means that the terrain for debate and struggle has shifted, and it is a
better terrain, to be sure. But it is not the end of struggle, and we would
be very unwise to regard it that way, even provisionally. We will doubtless
agree and disagree with various actions he takes and fails to take. But if
the initial expectation is that he is and will be "redemption" itself, then
we will punish him mercilessly when he fails us (or we will find ways to
deny or suppress that disappointment in order to keep alive the experience
of unity and unambivalent love).
If a consequential and dramatic disappointment is to be averted, he will
have to act quickly and well. Perhaps the only way to avert a "crash" – a
disappointment of serious proportions that would turn political will against
him – will be to take decisive actions within the first two months of his
presidency. The first would be to close Guantanamo and find ways to
transfer the cases of detainees to legitimate courts; the second would be to
forge a plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to begin to
implement that plan. The third would be to retract his bellicose remarks
about escalating war in Afghanistan and pursue diplomatic, multilateral
solutions in that arena. If he fails to take these steps, his support on
the left will clearly deteriorate, and we will see the reconfiguration of
the split between liberal hawks and the anti-war left. If he appoints the
likes of Lawrence Summers to key cabinet positions, or continues the failed
economic polices of Clinton and Bush, then at some point the messiah will be
scorned as a false prophet. In the place of an impossible promise, we need
a series of concrete actions that can begin to reverse the terrible
abrogation of justice committed by the Bush regime; anything less will lead
to a dramatic and consequential disillusionment. The question is what
measure of dis-illusion is necessary in order to retrieve a critical
politics, and what more dramatic form of dis-illusionment will return us to
the intense political cynicism of the last years. Some relief from illusion
is necessary, so that we might remember that politics is less about the
person and the impossible and beautiful promise he represents than it is
about the concrete changes in policy that might begin, over time, and with
difficulty, bring about conditions of greater justice.
--
James Michael
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